Meditations for Lent
Notes and Maps
Jesus goes through Samaria
John 4: 1-6
Jesus did not have to go through Samaria (green route.) It was by far the easier route, but Jews almost always chose the much more dangerous and tortuous route down through the Dead Sea valley (red route), such was their distaste of contact with Samaritan people. Jesus' choice of this route speaks volumes about his character.
Who were the Samaritans?
The Samaritans were largely descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Menassah. They probable stayed in Palestine when the rest were carried off during the Assyrian captivity. Genetic evidence suggests that they kept themselves largely away from intermarriage with Canaanites, so they had every right to consider themselves true Isaelites - the purest remnant of the ten lost tribes. The similarities between Samaritans and Jews was such that the rabbis of the Mishnah found it impossible to draw a clear distinction between the two groups. Yet, by the time of Jesus, they were intensely disliked by the Jews (members of the tribe of Judah.) Why? Possibly because stayed in Palestine when the rest were carried off during the Assyrian captivity and were looked down upon by those sh later returned from captivity. (A bit like South Africans who were imprisoned or exiled during apartheid, who sometimes looked down on people who weren't.) Also, they only accepted the Torah, not the rest of the Old Testament. And, most importantly, because people of the tribe of Judah came to believe that they were the only true Israelites left - a singularly arrogant and exclusive attitude. It's and example of how human beings can find reasons to discriminate even where there are few discernible difference between groups. Church history is littered with deplorable, sometimes violent, examples of Christian groups rejecting each other.
Three kinds of bread.
- The relationship between the life of Jesus and the festivals of Israel.
Barley – bread for the poor.
Barley is an extremely robust cereal. It grows easily in many kinds of climates and is very resistant to drought and to pests. It is much easier to grow than wheat, and ripens more quickly. But it is a very rough kind of grain and produces poor quality bread. When wheat is available, barley is generally used only as fodder for animals. But because of its hardiness, it ensures that poor people always have food to eat. It is every man’s bread.
In Israel barley tended to ripen from the middle of March and was the staple diet of Israelites through the period of Passover. It was traditional near the beginning of the barley harvest to have a ceremony when the first crops were brought to the temple and waved before the Lord. In the year in which Jesus raised from the dead the celebration of the barley harvest fell on resurrection day. Hence Christ is “The firstborn from among the dead.” So barley is closely associated with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is the staple food for all mankind: his life was given that all might live. The very roughness of the body is symbolic of the rough treatment that Jesus received that we might live.
The feeding of the 5000 took place shortly before Passover. The little boys bread consisted of five barley loaves. In the weeks before and after Passover, it was the staple diet in Israel. Jesus took barley loaves (every man’s bread) and made sure that the entire multitude was fed. That was a picture that his body broken for us would make salvation available to all mankind.
Unleavened bread – the bread of suffering.
Jews were commanded to eat unleavened bread for seven days at Passover. The Passover prayer begins: “This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt.” It was to remind them of the affliction from which they were delivered in Egypt, and was symbolic of their suffering at that time. When Jesus “broke the bread” at the Last Supper, he was breaking bread of affliction, but it now came also to symbolise the bread of his own suffering which would free all mankind from “Egypt.” And, in keeping with the timing God had set centuries before, Jesus' sacrifice was made on the day of Passover. He ate the bread of affliction that we might live.
Bread made with wheat – the bread of the rich.
Thirty days after Passover, Jewish people celebrated Shavuot - the “Festival of Weeks.” It was to take place seven weeks plus one day after Passover – that is 50 days. Hence it became known as Pentecost meaning"Fiftieth."It was to celebrate the firstfruits of the wheat harvest (which ripens about seven weeks after the barley harvest.) It was a day of great rejoicing because it meant that the harvest had been successful and that people would not have to live any longer on barley loaves. Wheat is a far finer and more tasty cereal and makes, as we all know, wonderful bread. It is the bread of the rich.
In God’s preordained timing that was the day on which the Holy Spirit came – fifty days after Jesus' resurrection. It was the day on which all the blessings of the Holy Spirit were bestowed on the church; it is the day on which we became rich. The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace. If there is one sign that a person is filled with the spirit, it is joy.
How to Read and reflect on Scripture.
When St Benedict wrote his Rule for Monasteries few people in his society were literate. Yet he insisted that members of his community should read daily and in particular have a book they would read with special attention during Lent. Reading at that time would have been slower and more communal. Anyone reading would have done so aloud, murmuring the words quietly under their breath, as this would have made it easier to break up the solid text on the page. If people were reading in physical proximity it might have sounded like a busy beehive. I experienced this once in the long reading room packed with Orthodox Jews studying the Bible adjacent to the Wailing Wall in the Temple Precinct in Jerusalem. They were so focused they didn’t notice the intruder among them.
Reading is a very different way of learning from watching YouTube. Literacy is a learned skill, like prayer, half-active, half-passive. There is a stronger sense of intimate encounter with the writer’s inner consciousness. We are not distracted what they looked like, or by what they were wearing, or what their accent was when they wrote down their inner thoughts. In reading, we encounter another mind – perhaps long dead but still alive in the words – which calls us out of ourselves in an act of other-centred attention. We can respond or disagree as we savour and reflect on their words and style but, first of all, we have to listen to what they say rather than what we think. Good reading is therefore a step towards pure prayer.
There is a particular form of reading that can bear great spiritual fruit. We have to read scripture aware that the meaning is not only in the words but also in the ‘white spaces between the words’ and in the way our heart-mind responds to them. We may feel how the words are expressing our own inexpressible experience of silence. We can ‘penetrate the meaning’ of scripture not just through the written text, but by ‘experience leading the way’. The contemplative reader becomes like the author of what he is reading, grasping the meaning directly and intuitively.
Scripture is like a finger pointing at the moon, but it is not the moon.
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The Feast of Tabernacles
I have been privileged twice to be in Jerusalem during Sukkot - the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a very happy family time. People put up little tents and "tabernacles" and eat all their meals under them. These are for remembering the 40 years in the wilderness when they lived in tents. You will even see tabernacles on balconies in blocks of flats, which are staggered in such a way that each one has open sky above it. Some of the tabernacles are extremely elaborate, others very plain, but every family has one and enjoys using it. September is a lovely time of the year in Israel – the heat of summer is gone and the rains of winter had not yet begun. So it's lovely to be outdoors. The principle underlying the construction of a temporary, almost nomadic, structure of a sukkah symbolises the abandonment of materialism, and a commitment to focus on spirituality, and hospitality. The whole atmosphere is rather similar to the days before Christmas Eve. Throughout the week you constantly see people going home with "Lulavs" - little branches of unopened date palms wrapped up in cellophane. When they get home they put them in a vase and enjoy watching them open, as a sign of new life and the first harvest after the 40 years in the wilderness. This is in obedience to Leviticus 23:40 which says: "And on the first day ye shall take the fruit of palm-trees, and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days." The date palm has historically been considered a symbol of Judea and the Jewish people.
Interestingly, the feast lasts seven days in Israel, but eight days in the diaspora (Jews living in rest of the world.) On "the last and greatest day of the feast" something spectacular takes place. Many thousands of people cram into the Kotel (the great Plaza in front of the Western Wall.) Then, at precisely 11 o'clock hundreds of priests, lined up with their back to the Western Wall, call out the Birkat Kohanim - the blessing from Numbers 6  (“The LORD bless you and keep you..."). It is incredibly moving to see families huddled together under the Tallit - a fringed garment worn as a prayer shawl - to receive the blessing. It is on this day that Jesus chose to reveal himself to the people and to give his most explicit exposition of he was.
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A festive week in Jerusalem
Balconies are staggered so that each is under the open sky
Some are extremely simple
Some Sukkah are beautiful and elaborate
This is the Sukkah at the Western Wall. Wendy is sitting here with the chairman of the Garden Tomb committee and his wife.
Families gather under the Tallit to receive the blessing at the Kotel
Crowds gather at the Kotel to receive the blessing. Note Sukkah in foreground, where we were sitting
Our own Sukkah on the roof of our flats at the Garden Tomb
How to Read and reflect on Scripture.
When St Benedict wrote his Rule for Monasteries few people in his society were literate. Yet he insisted that members of his community should read daily and in particular have a book they would read with special attention during Lent. Reading at that time would have been slower and more communal. Anyone reading would have done so aloud, murmuring the words quietly under their breath, as this would have made it easier to break up the solid text on the page. If people were reading in physical proximity it might have sounded like a busy beehive. I experienced this once in the long reading room packed with Orthodox Jews studying the Bible adjacent to the Wailing Wall in the Temple Precinct in Jerusalem. They were so focused they didn’t notice the intruder among them.
Reading is a very different way of learning from watching YouTube. Literacy is a learned skill, like prayer, half-active, half-passive. There is a stronger sense of intimate encounter with the writer’s inner consciousness. We are not distracted what they looked like, or by what they were wearing, or what their accent was when they wrote down their inner thoughts. In reading, we encounter another mind – perhaps long dead but still alive in the words – which calls us out of ourselves in an act of other-centred attention. We can respond or disagree as we savour and reflect on their words and style but, first of all, we have to listen to what they say rather than what we think. Good reading is therefore a step towards pure prayer.
There is a particular form of reading that can bear great spiritual fruit. We have to read scripture aware that the meaning is not only in the words but also in the ‘white spaces between the words’ and in the way our heart-mind responds to them. We may feel how the words are expressing our own inexpressible experience of silence. We can ‘penetrate the meaning’ of scripture not just through the written text, but by ‘experience leading the way’. The contemplative reader becomes like the author of what he is reading, grasping the meaning directly and intuitively.
Scripture is like a finger pointing at the moon, but it is not the moon.
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It has finally happened.
The chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees have Jesus under arrest and in their grasp.
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This holy week Jesus confronts the forces of evil. Sometimes that also involves confronting systems, organisations. Jesus has been attacking the Pharisee-driven system for three years. He has been exposing a system which has been using God’s name for the pursuit of personal power, not for service or justice or compassion. Now they will have their revenge.
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We are all acutely aware of the suffering of vulnerable people in our societies brought on by the wilful neglect of government, of politicians who claim to seek position in order to serve, even of ministers of religion, like the Pharisees, who may say that they dedicate their ministry to the service of God’s people, only to fall prey to Pharisee-type weaknesses. The suffering they bring about is unimaginable. It might begin in quite small and apparently insignificant ways – a freedom curtailed; a warning not to speak out; an exclusion from an in-group. But it gains strength, such that it develops its own momentum and becomes overwhelming. It creates communities of utter poverty; it turns citizens into refugees; it forces children to play in sewers. God weeps for us when we do this to our world and to our children’s hopes and dreams for the future.
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And it makes one say in anguish ‘But what can I as an individual do that will make a difference?’
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Jesus speaks out. He is fully aware that it is going to mean drawing the poison of hatred, self-seeking, and disobedience to God onto himself. But truth is at stake and He knows what he needs to do. There is a time when keeping silent in the face of oppression and injustice is not acceptable; when systems need to be challenged. Speaking out is a huge act of courage. It is messy. It calls people’s beliefs and their loyalties into question. It challenges factions and power-blocks. It is dangerous.
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Jesus’s act in confronting the Pharisees is a political act. He puts his body on the line. He knows who he is and whom he serves. He knows that he needs must go through this. He knew that the outcome of speaking up would almost certainly lead to his being killed. Jesus had the power to call on the angels to destroy the Pharisees and the chief priests. This power was manifest dramatically when they fell to the ground at his “I AM.” But Sometimes we show our authority by relinquishing the exercise of power.
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Jesus’ ministry so full of time spent with ordinary, needy people reminds us that ultimately we are all separate individuals, and that every individual is immensely precious. That’s why, at our best, we believe in democracy rather in allowing power-groups to keep individuals in bondage and fear. We can speak out against them. And if that leads us into trials, we do not need to give in to the hopelessness and helplessness so often the fate of victims. Instead we are invited to make an active decision to be participants in making meaning out of suffering. If all we can manage is to keep the faith, then the forces of darkness are pushed back.
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God didn’t will Jesus to die. Jesus died because of the vocation given him by God; it was the culmination of his life’s work. How could illness be the will of a loving God? But, as children of God can we trust that he enfolds us in His care as we go through it. The Rev. Peter Storey shares the experience of his late father, also a minister, who said about his terminal illness, “God didn’t send this illness; I could never believe in that kind of God. But now that I have it, I believe He is trusting me with how I bear it.”
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Jesus refused to become part of any system which excluded and hurt the weak.
This was in fulfilment of the prophecy in Isaiah 42:3 – “A bruised reed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench.” Francis Schaeffer wrote a little book called “The Mark of the Christian,” which, of course, is love. He decried the way that the church has at times cut itself to ribbons for the sake of favourite doctrines, and has become a place of hurtful, exclusive systems.
He ends the book by quoting this poem:
Weep, weep for those
Who do the work of the Lord
With a high look
And a proud heart.
The bruised reed they break;
By their great strength,
the smoking flax
They trample.
Weep not for the quenched
(For their God will hear their cry
And the Lord will come to save them)
But weep, weep for the quenchers.
Weep, weep for those
Who have made a desert
In the name of the Lord.